Friday, September 24, 2010

I did it!

I "followed" a recipe and it ended up looking like the original picture...pretty awesome. So, as previously mentioned, I bought a large butternut squash with no idea of what to do with it. Then, thanks to Smitten Kitchen, I found an amazing recipe that looked pretty easy. Yay! This warm butternut squash and chickpea salad just called my name, and I knew I had to make it. I love every ingredient that goes into hummus (who doesn't?), I love fall squash, so really, it was made to be made!

For such a relatively simple recipe, it was sadly one of the more labor intensive meals I've ever made. This meatless meatloaf was probably the most difficult thing I've made (which pisses me off because the food network gives it an "easy" rating), but mostly because of all the ingredients and my lack of a food processor. But man, it was amazing. I need to make that again very soon. Don't pay attention to the three out of five star rating. The people that rated it are just bad vegetarians. And assholes.

I really need to get a real camera...these phone pictures are terrible.

I peeled the b.n.s. with a vegetable peeler, cut it, and scooped out the innards.

Her recipe called for all spice in the squash coating, but I didn't have any. I did, however, add red pepper flakes and agave nectar (with the olive oil, garlic, and salt) just for funsies. I made it reaaally awesome.

I roasted the cubes at 450 degrees, because I think my oven runs low. Or maybe I'm just impatient. I roasted them until they started to get juuuust a little brown. I tried a cube and started laughing because it tasted so good. They were perfectly roasted...delicious and creamy. I would have been perfectly happy stopping here and eating the entire squash like that, but I already had made the dressing and chopped the onion.

See? It kind of looks like her picture! Well...way worse quality...deal with it.

I pretty much followed her recipe for the dressing (garlic, lemon juice, tahini, water, olive oil), but I didn't measure anything. I also added a wee little bit of cumin.

If you ever make this, be prepared that when you add tahini to a bowl of lemon juice and garlic, it turns into a nasty curdly paste. Gross. But after you add the water and olive oil, it all gets better. :)

In the end, I could have done with waaaay less red onion. I have nothing against red onions, but the rest of the salad was so tasty that the onion was just getting in the way.

Just to make all of you readers jealous, here is a picture of a spicy dragon roll I had the other day. YUMMMY!!!